Quick quiz: Who said this about Medicare? "With an aging population and rising health care costs, we are spending too fast to sustain the program. And if we don't gradually reform the system while protecting current beneficiaries, it won't be there when future retirees need it. We have to reform Medicare to strengthen it."

It wasn't Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), Mitt Romney's new running mate, who has been vocal about the need for Medicare reform. It was President Barack Obama, just last year.

As the debate reignites over the government's health care plan for seniors, which has a long-term unfunded liability of nearly $37 trillion, two things are important to remember:

1. Obamacare has already "ended Medicare as we know it."

2. There is bipartisan consensus for moving Medicare toward a premium support model, meaning that the government would make a fixed contribution toward each enrollee's plan, but the enrollee would have the freedom to choose which health care plan he or she wants.

Medicare has been unsustainable for some time. The continued "plan" to deal with the entitlement's runaway growth has been to cut payments to health care providers—but because that would harm patients by reducing the number of doctors available, Congress keeps putting it off. As Heritage expert Bob Moffit explains:Physicians, under current law, also face Medicare payment cuts that are so draconian—31 percent in 2013—that Congress once again will likely stop them from going into effect. Yet the prospects remain profoundly unfavorable for physicians. More seniors plus fewer providers does not—and cannot—equal "guaranteed" benefits.

The President and other supporters have claimed that Obamacare would help protect seniors. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office just updated its estimate of the amount Obamacare steals from Medicare to fund itself—a whopping $716 billion between 2013 and 2022.

As Heritage's Alyene Senger wrote, "With a raid on Medicare of this magnitude, President Obama's assertion that his new law is protecting seniors and Medicare is astonishing. The truth is that Obamacare does the opposite."

If anyone starts talking about "ending Medicare as we know it," you can easily tell him that Obamacare already did that. In addition to robbing Medicare of its funding, Obamacare contains more than 160 provisions affecting Medicare.

The good news is that there are several strong plans for Medicare reform that could salvage the program for the next generation of retirees.

The Heritage Foundation has developed a Medicare premium support plan as part of its comprehensive budget reform, Saving the American Dream. With premium support, the government makes a fixed payment to a health plan chosen by an enrollee. If an enrollee wants to purchase a plan that is more expensive than the government payment, the enrollee may do so, paying the additional cost. If an enrollee wants to buy a less expensive plan, the enrollee may also do so, and keep the savings.

Under this model, health plans would compete directly with each other. Their ability to retain or expand their enrollment would depend solely on their ability to provide the best package of benefits and the highest quality of care at the most competitive price. The American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the National Center for Policy Analysis, and the Progressive Policy Institute have all endorsed this general approach to comprehensive Medicare reform.

Some Members of Congress also have been forging a powerful consensus on reforming Medicare. Senators Richard Burr (R–NC) and Tom Coburn (R–OK), and Representative Paul Ryan and Senator Ron Wyden (D–OR) have put forth plans that would improve on the experience of defined-contribution ("premium support") financing that today characterizes the competitive private plan program in Medicare Part C and the Medicare drug program in Medicare Part D.

Without reform, Medicare is headed toward a crash landing, leaving America's seniors in the lurch. Heritage's Moffit asserts:Medicare premium support, long a bipartisan proposal, is the best alternative to this unhappy scenario. It would improve the environment for medical practice, guarantee retirees better choices and broader access to quality care, encourage faster innovation in care delivery, and discourage waste and fraud in medical transactions. It would also deliver superior cost control. For the next generation of taxpayers and retirees alike, there is no better future.

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

I am enjoying the reading and analysis on the Ryan pick. One oversight in much of it is that is that Romney picked Ryan for the number two slot, not the top of the ticket. Ryan will be defending the Romney plan and contrasting and attacking the Obama record. It is not exactly the case that Romney needs to defend the Ryan plan. Missing in the coverage of the Ryan road map is that he always said he was open to other ideas and other plans; none were forthcoming from the Dems in congress or the too-busy-with-other-things White House.

The strange timing of the pick missing a big media spotlight came from the fact (reported at Time.com) that the Milwaukee tragedy was in his district and the service was Friday. Waiting for a bigger media splash opportunity would not have been worth holding up the announcement and getting on with the campaign.

I think we got the pick and the reasons for it right on the board, which is nice, and so did Romney.

Gov. Romney has taken my 16 year plan a step forward. Instead of two terms each of Romney and Rubio, this allows for a 24 year plan with Romney, Ryan and then Rubio. This gives Rubio quite a bit more time to prepare to be the best President ever. 24 years of competent, limited government governance could put this country back on the right-track in a way that everyone (except the outgoing first lady) could be proud of.

"The commitment Mitt Romney and I make to you is this," Ryan said at a rally Saturday. " We won't duck the tough issues; we will lead. We won't blame others; we will take responsibility. And we won't replace our founding principles; we will reapply them."

Rush Limbaugh just made an observation in his opening monologue today that I think is particularly on-point:

"We now have a CONSERVATIVE on the ticket, and not just a fiscal conservative - a SMALL GOVERNMENT conservative - the two don't always correspond. Paul Ryan is a SMALL GOVERNMENT, unabashed, unapologetic, bold conservative who can take the fight directly to Obama and his failed government policies, and articulate this to the American people. And I think he is energizing Romney to do the same."

Logged

"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

One of President Obama's regular attacks on Paul Ryan's Medicare reform is that it would force seniors to pay $6,400 a year more for health care. But merely because he keeps repeating this doesn't mean it's in the same area code of accurate.

The claim is based on a now out-of-date Congressional Budget Office estimate of the gap between the cost of health care a decade from now, in 2022, and the size of the House budget's premium-support subsidy for a typical 65-year-old in 2022.

In other words, the $6,400 has no relevance for any senior today. None. But it also is unlikely to have any relevance for any senior ever because CBO concedes that its number is highly uncertain and "will depend on the evolution of the health care and health insurance systems over time, which is hard to predict." That's for sure.

Enlarge ImageimageimageGetty Images

Republican Vice Presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) speaks during the Victory Rally in Florida at Town Square, Lake Sumter Landing on August 18, 2012 in The Villages, Florida.

The more fundamental problem is that the CBO analysis has nothing to do with the current Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan plan. Nada. Over the last year Mr. Ryan has made major adjustments to his original proposal as he sought a compromise with Democrats. In its most up-to-date analysis, CBO admits that it "does not have the capability at this time to estimate such effects" in the new version. That is, it does not have the tools to make its $6,400 exaggeration again.

The reason CBO can't model the 2013 House budget and the Romney-Ryan plan is that they harness markets with competitive bidding. Congress's budget gnomes can't handle these dynamic forces.

So how would Ryan 2.0 work in practice? Traditional Medicare and all private insurers in a region would make bids to cover seniors and compete for their business by offering the best value and prices. Then the government would give everyone a subsidy equal to the second-lowest bid.

If seniors chose that No. 2 option, whether it was Medicare or another plan, they'd break even and pay nothing extra out of pocket. If they picked the cheapest plan, they'd keep whatever was left over after the government subsidy—that is, they'd get a cash refund. If they instead picked the third-cheapest option, the fourth-cheapest, etc., they'd pay the difference above the government subsidy.

That structure ensures that seniors would have at least two choices (and likely far more) that they are guaranteed to do better than they do now. The amount of the premium-support subsidy would also be tied to underlying health-care costs, so it would not shift costs to beneficiaries, as Democrats also falsely claim. The very reasonable Romney-Ryan policy bet is that costs could nonetheless fall over time because seniors would have the incentive to switch to the most competitively priced Medicare plan.

The latest real-world reason to expect that would happen comes from a new paper by the Harvard economists Zirui Song, David Cutler and Michael Chernew. The researchers—Mr. Cutler used to be an Obama health adviser—looked at Medicare Advantage, the program that currently gives one of four seniors private alternatives (and that ObamaCare deliberately undermines).

The Advantage insurers make bids today against a benchmark set by traditional Medicare spending, and the Harvard trio find that the second lowest bid in 2009 came in 9% below the normal program on average. Medicare costs $717 per person per month, but the cheapest private plan could provide the same coverage for 87 cents on the government dollar. The second cheapest could do it for 91 cents.

Messrs. Song, Cutler and Chernew are alarmed because they say their results imply—broadly speaking—that seniors in traditional Medicare would have to pay $64 a month more if they kept that coverage. (Note: That totals $768 a year, not $6,400.) But a better way of reading the data is that seniors would migrate to more cost-effective options, saving both themselves and taxpayers a bundle.

None of these facts are likely to deter Democrats from their distorted claims. But the truth is that the Ryan-Romney reform isn't anywhere close to Mr. Obama's cartoon version.

Coburn: The Truth About Ryan and His Critics First Obama rejected the 'grand bargain' of his own Bowles-Simpson commission. Then he turned around and ridiculed the Wisconsin congressman's comprehensive alternative..

By TOM COBURN The more voters learn about Congressman Paul Ryan's leadership style and his thoughtful and creative approach to solving problems, the more they will decide that the Romney-Ryan ticket looks presidential and electable. That's why there has been a coordinated effort in recent days to ramp up not just the "Mediscare" rhetoric against Mr. Ryan, but to depict him as a partisan ideologue who was instrumental in derailing a grand bargain on the deficit. This line of attack is cynical and, most of all, false.

First, Paul Ryan didn't force President Obama to abandon the budget recommendations of his own 2010 deficit commission, known as Bowles-Simpson. Mr. Obama's decision to punt on deficit reduction—and then to ridicule Mr. Ryan's plan to address the deficit—offended and disappointed Republicans and Democrats alike.

Enlarge Image

CloseAssociated Press

Paul Ryan and Barack Obama at the Washington, D.C., health-care summit, Feb. 25, 2010. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R.., Tenn.) looks on..For example, Erskine Bowles, President Clinton's former chief of staff and the co-chairman of the Bowles-Simpson commission, described the Ryan budget that passed the House in March as "sensible, straightforward, honest, [and] serious." About President's Obama's budget, which failed in the Senate in May by a vote of 97 to zero, Mr. Bowles said, "I don't think anybody took that budget very seriously."

Second, even though I served on the president's debt commission and supported its recommendations, I recognize that we already have a debt commission. It's called Congress. No one in Congress has done more to offer specific solutions to our fiscal challenges than Paul Ryan. He also has demonstrated the rarest and most important trait in politics—moral courage.

What he has been missing is a willing partner in the White House and Senate. At any point in the past four years, President Obama could have called Republicans John Boehner, now House speaker, and Rep. Ryan, now House Budget Committee chairman, over to the White House and cut a budget deal. The president doesn't have to wait for a crisis, such as a debt-limit vote or a fiscal cliff. Attacking Mr. Ryan for not carrying his weight is like Britain's prewar-appeasement prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, accusing Winston Churchill of not being prepared for World War II.

Mr. Ryan's public explanation for voting against Bowles-Simpson was the same one he told commission members at the time. A central objection was that by taking ObamaCare "off the table," the commission put what everyone knew to be a fiscally flawed program off-limits. He was also troubled that the commission would not embrace structural entitlement reform.

As Mr. Ryan explained on "Meet the Press" on May 20: "Bowles-Simpson says reduce tax rates across the board by closing special-interest loopholes, which is what we say. The reason people like me didn't support Bowles-Simpson, because it ignored health-care entitlements, the driver of our debt, and therefore we put up our alternatives. . . . That's how you get the compromise. . . .

"You pass what you believe, then the Senate passes what they believe, then you compromise. That isn't happening because the president and his party leaders in the Senate are refusing to do anything to address this debt crisis. What's going to happen at the end of the year I think will largely be determined by who wins this election and this election is really going to be a great choice of two contrasting visions."

Just as ludicrous as blaming Paul Ryan for Washington's impasse is the assault against the Romney-Ryan ticket on Medicare. By picking Mr. Ryan, critics say, Gov. Romney is backing sweeping and radical changes to the health program for seniors. This line of attack will fail.

Voters understand that what is radical is not the Ryan plan but the status quo. If we do nothing to reform Medicare, it will go bankrupt and bring down the American economy. The left's election-year war on math will not change our unsustainable fiscal outlook.

Medicare Part A—the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund—could run out of money within five years. The massive amount of borrowing necessary to keep the safety net intact will trigger a debt crisis (higher interest rates, inflation, lower standards of living and higher unemployment) sooner rather than later. That's why, as former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman said last year, "We can't save Medicare as we know it. We can only save Medicare if we change it."

Paul Ryan shares Mr. Lieberman's view. He has drawn from the best ideas of Republicans and Democrats in order to preserve the safety net and prevent a debt crisis. For instance, he borrowed "premium support" from the Clinton administration's Medicare Commission, chaired by Louisiana's then-Democratic Sen. John Breaux. It employs a "same benefit, less cost" approach to reform by helping seniors shop and pay for health care with premium assistance from the federal government.

Mr. Ryan refined his premium-support concept with the help of Democrat Alice Rivlin, who worked in the Johnson and Clinton administrations. Ironically, Ms. Rivlin's work with Mr. Ryan was more "moderate" than her 2010 proposal with former Republican Sen. Pete Domenici, which implemented premium support on a faster timetable than the Ryan proposal.

Earlier this year, Mr. Ryan persuaded Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden to embrace fundamental entitlement reform. The Wyden-Ryan plan allows traditional Medicare to continue as an option alongside his premium-support model for those who want to choose their own level of insurance.

What is radical in 2012 is not Paul Ryan's vision but the lengths to which his critics will go to avoid dealing with the national debt. By picking Mr. Ryan as his vice president, Mr. Romney has given America the debate it deserves, and a team that can succeed.

Dr. Coburn, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, served on the "Bowles-Simpson" National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He is the author of "The Debt Bomb" (Thomas Nelson, 2012).

"The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money forunexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys." --ThomasJefferson

Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate made clear that thepresidential race would not only be about what a lousy job Barack Obama has done butalso about the future of our great nation. We welcome the choice, not least becauseit drives the Left absolutely batty.

Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee,knows the federal fiscal situation inside and out. Indeed, he schooled the presidentduring last year's debt ceiling negotiations and during the February 2010 bipartisanhealth care reform meeting (http://youtu.be/-_jga835j5Q ). Not that Obama can betaught -- he's an extreme leftist Keynesian through and through. The campaign nowwill center on how to fix Obama's abysmal record of setting a new spending floorwith more than triple the highest Bush deficit and driving up national debt bynearly $6 trillion in his all-too-long three-and-a-half years in office.

Ryan has a plan to put the brakes on this bullet train. It's not a miracle plan thatwill suddenly restore constitutional boundaries to federal spending, and it'scertainly not a plan to "end Medicare as we know it" or to "dump grandma off acliff," as the Left would have us believe. It also won't cost seniors another $6,400a year, as Obama falsely claims (http://patriotpost.us/editions/14497 ). But it is aplan that will rein in spending growth and stabilize Social Security, Medicare andMedicaid for future generations.

Ryan's Medicare reform plan, crafted with the help of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR),provides a premium-supported private-insurance alternative for seniors that wouldintroduce competition to drive costs down. One downside is that it doesn't startuntil 2023, but his plan offers choice -- something the Left purportedly favors.Obama's record, on the other hand, is that he transferred $716 billion from thecoming decade's Medicare funding to hide some of ObamaCare's massive cost. In otherwords, Obama and the Democrats are the ones "ending Medicare as we know it."

Then again, Medicare can't continue "as we know it" -- it's going bankrupt and willtake the country with it. It's ironic and outrageous that the Left built the "fiscalcliff" we're careening toward only to blame the Right for the consequences, allbecause we won't stand for raising taxes or running up the deficit even more.

There's no doubt that Romney-Ryan can win (http://patriotpost.us/alexander/14512 )in November. The only question is whether they can communicate their more fiscallyresponsible vision in a way that resonates with the American people and sufficientlyrebuts the Obama campaign's attempts to divide by class, age, race and gender.

The great thing about Paul Ryan’s speech last night is that it worked at so many levels. As I tried to show in my initial post about the speech, it worked as an indictment of Obama administration policy, as deft support for Mitt Romney, and as traditional pulling of the heartstrings.

And it worked at an additional level that I neglected to note — a portryal of Barack Obama as a fad. Ryan made this point most memorably in this line:

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

But he also made it poetically with this exquisite one, perhaps my favorite:

It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.

If the images of Obama have already faded; if the slogans are already tired; if the Obama moment has already passed, then what is the case for reelecting him? It can only be that the other guys are awful. But only die-hard Democratic partisans could have watched Paul Ryan last night and concluded that he is awful.

Ryan is younger than Obama, fresher than Obama, and not so very far behind Obama (the 2008 version) in the oratory department. He doesn’t need Greek columns to provide heft to his words. That’s because his words aren’t light ones such as hope and change. His words, well-used, are pillars in their own right — the pillars of our country: responsibility, opportunity, freedom.

Most polticians make these words seem tired. Ryan made them seem like today’s wind.

I would add the deft restructuring of the Medicare debate into BO raided Medicare for $716B in the name of paying for an entitlement we didn't want, but the Reps are going to defend Medicare! After being demogogued by the Progs on this subject for so many years, how empowering to have a Rep leader who knows how to play judo with such attacks!

Also, nice riff about the different music choices ("Elevator muzak to ACDC to Zeppellin")-- it too works on more than one level.

Also, nicely handled reach out to the evangelicals.

Also, I was pleasantly surprised by Condi. I feared her presence to be a potential weak link for the Dems to play the "Mitt is Bush retread" card, but I thought she handled with subject of foreign affairs well while being politically astute to the needs of MR. This was the first I heard her discuss domestic issues and I thought her very good and her close with the "little girl under Jim Crow believing she could be President and became SecState" a genuinely powerful moment. There is more here than I realized and I think I am not the only person who will be keeping an eye out for her. She's very classy, very bright, very well educated, very thoughtful and articulate , , , and seems quite capable of graciously bitch-slapping any prog who tried to Aunt Jemima her

Ryan at the AARP The real story is that he didn't trim his ideas and still won applause..

The headlines this weekend were all about the boos Paul Ryan elicited on Friday when he addressed the AARP, the self-styled seniors' lobby. The herd of independent media minds missed the real story, which is that the Republican Vice Presidential nominee went into the heart of the entitlement culture, told some hard truths, and even won applause for doing so.

Mr. Ryan deserves credit merely for showing up at an organization that portrays itself as nonpartisan but whose leadership is dominated by long-time liberals who consistently pursue the Democratic Party's entitlement agenda. On Friday, our Kimberley Strassel reported on the long email trail showing how AARP officials served as an arm of the White House in promoting ObamaCare.

AARP CEO Barry Rand used his opening remarks to defend President Obama's health-care bill, including its accounting trick of taking $716 billion from Medicare to make a new entitlement appear to save money. He then turned the event over to President Obama, who via satellite attacked Mitt Romney and Mr. Ryan for wanting to deny medical care to seniors.

Mr. Ryan showed up anyway and didn't soften his message that Medicare is on a path to bankruptcy if it isn't reformed. His truths—including his initial point that seniors would benefit from the repeal of ObamaCare—didn't go over well with the crowd's Obama partisans, who tipped their political bent by booing and shouting "47%."

Largely unreported, however, was the applause Mr. Ryan received. That came in response to his criticism of ObamaCare's Independent Payment Advisory Board, the 15 "unaccountable bureaucrats" empowered under the Affordable Care Act to make cuts to Medicare that Mr. Ryan rightly said will "jeopardize access to care." The payment board is largely shielded from Congressional review precisely so it can ration care with little democratic oversight. This is how Mr. Obama will rein in Medicare costs—whether seniors like it or not.

The Wisconsin Congressman was also cheered for his promise that his Medicare premium-support reform would "force insurance companies to compete against each other to better serve seniors, with more help for the poor and the sick—and less help for the wealthy."

Perhaps most striking, Mr. Ryan even earned some applause when he discussed Social Security reform, including "slightly raising the retirement age over time and slowing the growth of benefits for those with higher incomes." Raising the retirement age used to be anathema and AARP still opposes it.

In an instructive question and answer session that is available on AARP's website, Mr. Ryan also held forth on the threat of rising national debt, the economic drawbacks of raising payroll taxes (the favorite liberal answer on Social Security), and the bipartisan roots of his proposal for Medicare premium support. All of this was in vivid contrast to Mr. Obama's speech, which was devoid of ideas beyond those in ObamaCare.

The press corps likes to whine that politicians duck the "hard choices," but when a politician doesn't duck they quickly call it politically foolish and a lost cause. That's what they're now doing on Medicare, repeating the Obama campaign's spin that seniors oppose reform even as the polls show Republicans doing better on the issue than usual.

Everyone knows that Medicare spending can't continue on its current course, and one difference in this campaign is that Mr. Ryan is willing to say so while Mr. Obama and his media and AARP phalanx pretend otherwise.

"I got to start off on something that was really troubling that occurred last night. Did you guys watch that Packer game last night? I mean, give me a break," an exasperated Ryan said.

"It reminds me of President Obama and the economy. If you can't get it right, it is time to get out," Ryan continued.

"I half think these refs work part-time for the Obama administration in the Budget Office. They see the national debt clock starring them in the face, they see a debt crisis and they just ignore and pretend it didn't even happen. They are trying to pick the winners and losers and they don't even do that very well."

October 10, 2012 - 8:29 am The Daily Caller has a disturbing story up today. The outline goes like this: The moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate is Martha Raddatz of ABC News. She is the network’s senior foreign correspondent, and she is the sole moderator of the veep debate, which will center on foreign policy.

Raddatz has a connection with Barack Obama going all the way back to their days at Harvard. They worked on the Harvard Law Review together, and Obama attended her 1991 wedding. Fast forward to the present, and President Obama has appointed Raddatz’s husband, Julius Genachowski, to the Federal Communications Commission. Genachowski is also an Obama campaign bundler, meaning that he is a major fundraiser for the president’s re-election effort. That storyline alone raises questions of corruption and rewarding political supporters with powerful federal posts. Yet ABC insists that Raddatz has no conflict of interest in moderating the debate.

As if that all wasn’t bad enough, the Caller raised all of this with ABC on Monday but the network stonewalled. It finally admitted Raddatz’s connections to Obama, but only after ABC went to Politico, the Daily Beast, and the Huffington Post to get some damage control printed on those liberal sites first.

Is this how an allegedly neutral news network should behave?

This is the kind of story a Jake Tapper would ordinarily raise in a White House press briefing, but whoops! Tapper works for ABC. And whoops! the Obama White House quietly scuttled press briefings a couple of weeks ago. The White House press corps didn’t even raise a fuss about that.

Thursday’s debate, as I mentioned earlier, is supposed to center on foreign policy. Right now the Obama administration is embroiled in what looks very much like a cover-up regarding the sacking in Benghazi. But Vice President Biden has, so far, managed to escape any scrutiny or questions about what happened in Benghazi and who knew what and when. Will moderator Martha Raddatz grill Biden about this very serious foreign policy question, or will she let him off the hook?

In the wake of last week’s presidential debate, many on the left assailed debate moderator Jim Lehrer for his performance as a way of distracting from President Obama’s weak showing. Raddatz surely knows this. Her husband’s status with the Obama campaign plus her own longstanding connection to the president himself suggests where her political sympathies lie. She has to know that if she aggressively questions Biden, she stands a strong chance of being ripped by the left as Lehrer was.

Her and her husband’s connections to Obama plus ABC’s behavior suggest that there is a fix in for Thursday’s vice presidential debate. If Raddatz does not press Biden hard about Libya, America will know that that debate was rigged to favor the Obama administration.

I am sure that A) the CPD would make sure to use moderators with such strong biases, especially when, in essence, half of the people who regularly use its services are Republicans, and B) that the Romney/Ryan campaign would have signed on with such obvious bias. The rules of the debates, down to the height of the podium and the temperature in the room are agreed to by the people involved. I doubt the personal history of the moderator, if it concerned the people on the actual ticket, would have escaped scrutiny.

Bigdog, I am surprised (amazed?) that you do not see a conflict with the moderator's husband being not only a supporter but an active bundler for the Obama-Biden campaign. Bias that has gone from subtle to obvious has now become institutional and accepted. It was agreed to by the campaign - only in the context of being offered far worse, maybe Chris Matthews (NBC), Bob Schieffer CBS. Do you think they chose her over Chris Wallace or Brit Hume or anyone at Fox? I don't. The only choice that the opponent of Sen Feinstein found was getting no debate at all, so the 'acceptance' of mainstream, out of the closet, tingle in the leg partisanship is where we are in 2012. Perhaps she will go out of her way to be fair to the opposing team or maybe Ryan can successfully take on both of them, we will see. Still it is a sad state of affairs IMHO.

Likewise, Doug, I am surprised (amazed) that you (and others) don't think that a professional can be a professional. I would love to discuss this tomorrow (or later tonight). What are you going to do if Biden IS asked about Libya?

Likewise, Doug, I am surprised (amazed) that you (and others) don't think that a professional can be a professional. I would love to discuss this tomorrow (or later tonight). What are you going to do if Biden IS asked about Libya?

I guess I'm having a hard time finding a seam between the MSM "journo-listers" and the DNC.

Ahead of Thursday evening's highly-anticipated debate between Vice President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Rep. Paul Ryan, pundits are wondering whether the moderator, ABC News' Martha Raddatz, will comply with pressure from media colleagues to be more aggressive than Jim Lehrer of PBS was in last week's presidential debate. There is reason to believe she might: Raddatz has irked at least one campaign from the moderator's seat: the 1990 gubernatorial campaign of Democrat John Silber, president of Boston University.

Raddatz (at right, above) famously asked Silber why he had not campaigned more frequently in poor minority communities, prompting him to respond: "There is no point in my making a speech on crime control to a group of drug addicts."

Silber, amidst accusations of racism, fought to clarify his remarks in the days that followed, and visited the predominantly black community of Roxbury in Boston--though he refused to apologize. He went on to win the Democratic primary by 10 points, though he lost to Republican William Weld in the general election.

While Silber was responsible for his own gaffe, public consensus was that Raddatz had likely aimed to knock him off balance, joining the media's general skepticism of--and opposition to--his campaign.

In the days that followed, Raddatz--then known as Martha Bradlee, after her first marriage to fellow reporter Ben Bradlee, Jr.--came under intense criticism from the League of Women Voters for what they called "irrelevant," personal questions.

"During the debate, candidates Francis X. Bellotti and John R. Silber were asked, among other things, what they do when they see a homeless person, asked to describe their personal driving records, to comment on their prior knowledge of Kitty Dukakis' problems with drugs and alcohol and to itemize the value of their real estate holdings," reported Renee Loth of the Boston Globe at the time [1].

The League of Women Voters complained that Raddatz's questions produced "no insight into the programs or policies of the candidates."

A Democratic consultant agreed: "I don't mind saying on the record that this was a crop of absolutely ridiculous, frivolous questions that were designed to call attention to the questioner," i.e. to Raddatz.

Silber's eventual triumph in the primary came despite strong opposition from the mainstream media, which had predicted he would lose. The media had been so active in their disdain for the politically-incorrect Silber that they became, in effect, part of the campaign, sparking a backlash from the public and from Silber himself.

In examining the media's role, the Boston Globe recounted a Silber quip from the campaign trail:

"What the media have not adequately assessed," he said, "is that if power tends to corrupt politicians and businessmen and lawyers, there's a good reason to believe it tends to corrupt journalists as well." [2]

For her part, Bradlee was adamant that journalists had to stand up to accusations of bias:

"The media has to be careful," she said. "The danger is that, because [Silber] attacks, the media may lay back and not cover him as vigorously as other candidates."

Silber's eventual loss to Weld was widely attributed to another "intemperate" response to a personal question in a debate [3]--coming from one of Raddatz's colleagues at Boston's WCVB-TV (Channel 5), Natalie Jacobson.

From Doug: "But I'm sure the incumbents were wide open in their negotiations for debate moderators."

For what its worth, I think this would be a good idea. I would like to see more discussion and breadth in the moderator choices, and I think that having one of the professionals from Fox that Doug suggested would be good for the debates.

This July 4, While Many of Us Give Thanks for the TroopsKenneth Anderson • July 4, 2010 2:08 pm

... and pray for their safety and honor their sacrifices, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for ABC news, Martha Raddatz, delivers herself of the following opinion concerning American fighting forces and drone warfare:

Traditionally, when a nation went to war, it had to invest its blood and treasure, but today’s joystick-wielding drone pilots can launch a missile strike from here at home, then hop in the minivan to meet the wife and kids for dinner. War couldn’t get any more impersonal.

And this is bad, why? Because it is striking, all on its own, that Ms. Raddatz thinks this state of affairs obviously undesirable in some way; the disapproval stands out, along with the apparent sense that it is so obvious that one need not even explicitly state why it is bad. But two views stand out from Ms. Raddatz’ account. First, American forces wielding drones have a playstation mentality when it comes to war. I last raised this at a conference a few days ago of military lawyers; the reaction was a collective sigh and roll of the eyes. Second, through the use of drones, the United States and its fighting men and women invest insufficient amounts of their own blood (why else phrase it “had to invest”?).

This comes in a special “big ideas” section of the July-August 2010 Atlantic. Actually, there’s nothing big or special about it. Ms. Raddatz is recycling conventional wisdom that got started back with some bits of Peter Singer’s Wired for War, and then elevated into a shared journalistic meme with Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece last fall. Ms. Raddatz does not seem to have received the memo, however, that the conventional wisdom among journalists is that even if you think that drones mean that US forces are not sufficiently engaged with their own blood, it is impolitic to mention it.

After I and a number of others began to call journalists and advocates and activists out on the question of whether they really, truly wanted to go on the record with what they were saying – ‘drones reduce the personal risks to US forces below the “efficient” level that would disincentivize “inappropriate” recourse to violence’, as a too-clever law student at one of our elite law schools put it to me last year – well, there was a sudden backpedaling. No, no, you misunderstand us (this from the ACLU), we always respect the professionalism, &tc., &tc., of US servicemen and women (although the CIA, another story; it is the Designated War Criminal, so far as I can read where the international advocacy community would ideally like to carry this over the next few years, once the Obama administration is safely departed from office).

Ms. Raddatz’ “big idea” is at least six months behind the times. Perhaps her bosses at ABC will encourage her to do a walk-back. But it is helpful to have the unfiltered biases of journalists at least occasionally on public display so that we all know what they are, particularly when it comes to the lives of American servicemen and women, as viewed by our leading foreign correspondents.

My view is ... thank you to all American forces for your sacrifices and your heroism, this 4th of July and the rest of the year. Any time the United States can find technology that will make your task safer – particularly while reducing civilian collateral damage over what war traditionally has meant (e.g., a rolling artillery barrage by the Pakistani army) – then, well, faster please.

When Congressman Paul Ryan was named Mitt Romney’s running mate, one of the dominant liberal-media spin lines is that his budget proposal would “slash Medicare.” Everyone knows that Medicare spending is never “slashed,” but there are proposals to slow it from its skyrocketing trend line.

ABC reporter Martha Raddatz, who will moderate Ryan’s debate with Vice President Biden, used exactly this kind of misleading terminology against President Bush on February 4, 2008: "The President’s budget slashes billions of dollars in the growth of federal health care programs. Medicare and Medicaid would be cut by almost $200 billion."

Under fire for bias after The Daily Caller revealed Barack Obama attended her (first) wedding in 1991 to one of his Harvard Law classmates, ABC shot back in a statement, "This is absurd. Martha Raddatz is known for her tough, fair reporting, which is why it was no surprise to her colleagues inside and outside ABC News that she was chosen by the Commission on Presidential Debates for this assignment. "

Is Raddatz objective? There is evidence of liberal tilt that the Commission could have considered. Start with Raddatz fawning all over Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as “cool” and “trending” on May 9, 2012:

Let's face it, Hillary is cool. Trending. From the dancing and drinking photos during her trip to Colombia, to the iconic shot of the secretary texting on her C-17. When bloggers made up a few scenarios, telling the President and Vice President to get back to work. Rejecting a friend request from Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Clinton weighed in with real texts. "Rolling on the floor laughing." "Scrunchie time." Ahh, the scrunchie. Those were the days when staff would cringe at Hillary's desire to pull her hair back. The days that eventually led to the glamorous First Lady, the evolving hair styles. Never the same one twice, it seemed. And then, to the buttoned-up candidate Clinton. You know, the polarizing one. But not anymore. Her latest approval rating is 65 percent. Just behind that fashion icon, Michelle Obama.

Huge Obama Victory. On September 30, 2011, Raddatz hailed the Obama administration’s successful drone killing of American citizen/radical terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki's killing on ABC with the words "Another huge victory in the War on Terror." These are words ABC never used in the Bush era.

She announced, “And at 9:55 AM, the drones fire more than three hellfire missiles, hitting the vehicle carrying Awlaki which erupts in flames. His was the only vehicle hit. Another huge victory in the war on terror.” The next morning, anchor Bianna Golodryga repeated: “as we mentioned, this was another huge victory in the war on terror.”

Great Obama Save. When Obama removed Gen. Stanley McChrystal from command in Afghanistan and replaced him with Gen. David Petraeus, Raddatz (on the June 24, 2010 Good Morning America) echoed the other reporters who hailed the Obama move: “Sending Petraeus to Afghanistan is, by all accounts, a great save, for exactly the reasons the President described. Petraeus is jokingly referred to by some in the military as a water walker, who seems to turn even the worst situations around. He received enormous credit for that in Iraq, where he served three, different tours, the last overseeing the surge.”

Historic Day for Gay Activists. “This will be dramatically debated for days to come, but what we heard today from the military on Capitol Hill was truly historic. It was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the nation, who said today what no one in his position has ever said before.” – Raddatz on Adm. Mike Mullen supporting the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” restrictions on gays in the military, February 2, 2010 World News.

Wishing Terrorists Weren’t Muslims. When Nidal Malik Husan killed 13 Americans in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, ABC’s Charles Gibson incorrectly called him a "Muslim convert." Raddatz spoke for the liberal media as she lamented: "As for the suspect, Nidal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’" The next morning, ABC’s Diane Sawyer repeated: "We heard Martha Raddatz say last night that the wife of a soldier said ‘I wish his name had been Smith,’ so no one would have a reflexive question about that."

Republicans ‘Don’t Really Care About The World At All.' On the October 15, 1999 edition of Washington Week on PBS, host Gwen Ifill asked her assembled liberal journalists if "people are laughing at us" in London (and overseas in general) when Republicans in the Senate rejected the Clinton administration's attempt to pass a nuclear-test ban treaty. Martha Raddatz slammed the leader of the Senate Republicans: "I think Trent Lott may, I mean, Trent Lott talks about, well, we don’t care, you know, what the allies are saying. We don’t trust the nuclear test-ban treaty anyway. I think what it showed is they don’t really care about the world at all."

Bush's Biggest Cowards. Finally, for proof Raddatz was one of the Doom and Gloom Correspondents for ABC during the Bush years, consider this tidbit from Brent Bozell in 2004:

Our forces found a 17-page memo in Iraq, allegedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian with ties to al-Qaeda. The memo indicates that the resistance is recognizing our resolve to win the War on Terror. Of the United States, it says, "Our enemy is growing stronger day after day, and its intelligence information increases. By God, this is suffocation!" You mean, we're winning? This doesn't sound the nightly network news tone, does it?

On the evening of February 9, the Big Three networks warily acknowledged the memo as potentially authentic, but only CBS quoted this "suffocation" line....Unsurprisingly, ABC preferred a different line, one that demeaned the United States. Martha Raddatz pointed out that the letter says of Americans: "As you know, these are the biggest cowards that God has created, and the easiest target."

About the AuthorTim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow Tim Graham on Twitter.

Likewise, Doug, I am surprised (amazed) that you (and others) don't think that a professional can be a professional. I would love to discuss this tomorrow (or later tonight). What are you going to do if Biden IS asked about Libya?

Writing back quickly before the debate and before we know the answer to that. I'm sure (hoping?) she will ask tough questions of both sides. My point would be that most of the left, such as Star Tribune editors that have 'edited' my contributions, simply don't understand the viewpoint of the right. For example, has she ever demonstrated that she understands supply side economics beyond the straw caricature of it that comes from the left. In her case, I don't know the answer to that.

The judicial comparison is good. When would they and when should they recuse themselves. I would look to a lower court though for guidance. Would a Circuit judge recuse herself if her husband were deeply involved with one of the litigants?

Supreme Court is a bit different. They don't have alternate justices waiting and ready to step in like a jury pool. And they only have self-accountability except in the extreme possibility of impeachment.

In the case of the debates, other than Chris Wallace and other than perhaps Jim Lehrer, there aren't many journalists both sides would find acceptable. That could reflect on either the partisans or the journalists...

Debate leads with Libya. She asks JB why the administration won't it follow the logic of the intervention in Libya. And, in my opinion, she was hands on enough to end the sections on time, and make JB look like an a$$. And, Ryan looks presidential. For real. No matter how this election ends, I'll be looking for Ryan for the lead in the party for years.

Debate leads with Libya. She asks JB why the administration won't it follow the logic of the intervention in Libya. And, in my opinion, she was hands on enough to end the sections on time, and make JB look like an a$$. And, Ryan looks presidential. For real. No matter how this election ends, I'll be looking for Ryan for the lead in the party for years.

Big thumbs up, I like this post!

He held his composure in a rotten situation, complained once about the interruptions quite a ways into it. Showed his depth, knowledge and experience despite his relatively young age.

Debate leads with Libya. She asks JB why the administration won't it follow the logic of the intervention in Libya. And, in my opinion, she was hands on enough to end the sections on time, and make JB look like an a$$. And, Ryan looks presidential. For real. No matter how this election ends, I'll be looking for Ryan for the lead in the party for years.

Big thumbs up, I like this post!

He held his composure in a rotten situation, complained once about the interruptions quite a ways into it. Showed his depth, knowledge and experience despite his relatively young age.

Debate leads with Libya. She asks JB why the administration won't it follow the logic of the intervention in Libya. And, in my opinion, she was hands on enough to end the sections on time, and make JB look like an a$$. And, Ryan looks presidential. For real. No matter how this election ends, I'll be looking for Ryan for the lead in the party for years.

She still spun it and was clearly partisan. I'd like full disclosure as to what kind of wedding gift she got from Buraq. On the other hand, it is the first evidence we have of an investment by Obama that has actually paid off....

Good evening, gentlemen. It really is an honor to be here with both of you.

I would like to begin with Libya on a rather somber note. One month ago tonight, on the anniversary of 9/11, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi. The State Department has now made clear there were no protesters there. It was a pre-planned assault by heavily armed men. Wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden?

G M: No, this wasn't an "intelligence failure", unless we are using the word to mean capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.

The purpose of this question is to blunt the sword that could be weilded by Ryan on this topic. This gave the appearance of addressing the topic while giving cover so Biden could try to minimize the incompitence and negligence of the administration which followed up with blantant lies in an attempt to cover the atrocity up. Oh, BTW, Bin Laden still dead.

Corker Questions Vice President for Misleading on Deadly Terrorist Attacks in BenghaziOctober 12 2012 - KNOXVILLE, TENN. – U.S. Senator Bob Corker, R-Tenn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned Vice President Joe Biden’s comments during last night’s vice presidential debate in which Biden blamed the intelligence community for the administration’s initial false assessment of what led to the deadly attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, when it was known by the administration within 24 hours that the attack was an act of terrorism. The vice president also mistakenly claimed that no requests were made for additional security by U.S. officials in Libya prior to the attack on September 11.

"The vice president's comments last night about the situation in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four Americans, absolutely do not square with facts on the ground in Libya," said Corker. "Within 24 hours of the incident the administration knew that this was an orchestrated terrorist attack, and they clearly were aware of the specific details, including requests for additional security, that have finally been made public this week. With the vice president continuing this ruse with his comments last night, all Americans should ask what the administration is trying to hide."

Corker returned to Tennessee late Tuesday from a fact-finding trip to Jordan, Libya, and the Syrian border. In Tripoli on Monday, Corker participated in a briefing regarding the situation on the ground in Libya and the terrorist attack in Benghazi. He has continued to note the heroism of the four Americans killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and the security officials who responded to the attack that night.

This guy is not elite enough for me.....I just want a shallow,pompous, pseudo-academic who never produced anything in his life and never had a real job.

What are we to think of this selection? He's not a graduate ofColumbia University. He's not a graduate of Harvard. He wasn't selected as the President of the Harvard Law Review. He didn't get a special free quota scholarship ride to any prestigious university and, instead, had to work his way through Miami University of Ohio. For God's sake the man drove the Oscar Mayer Wiener Truck one summer and waited tables another!

One morning when Paul Ryan was sixteen years old he went in to wake his father up and found him dead of a heart attack. He didn't write two books about that experience. Instead, he assumed the role of adult at an early age, never having the luxury to pursue youthful drug use and the art of socialist revolution.

Instead, Paul Ryan and his mother took his grandmother, suffering from Alzheimer's, into the household and served as the primary care provider for his grandma. His grandma wasn't the Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii so she could offer nothing in return, except the element of "need".

Once Paul Ryan got his BA in Economics from Miami University of Ohio he was hired as a staff economist in Wisconsin Senator Kastin's office. The job must have not paid well because young Ryan moonlighted as a waiter and fitness trainer. No one offered him a "token honor" position at the University of Chicago and a $200,000 dollar a year salary.When a still young Paul Ryan returned to Wisconsin to run for Congress he didn't demonize his opponent and dig up dirt to shovel against him. He waited until the standing Congressman vacated the office before seeking the office. In Janesville, Wisconsin, they don't have a big political machine to promote you, to criminalize your opponent; instead Paul Ryan had to go door to door and sit at kitchen tables and listen to his future constituents.

After getting elected to Congress Paul Ryan didn't triumphantly march into Washington, buy himself a Georgetown townhouse and proceed over to K Street to rub elbows with lobbyists. He bunked in his Congressional office and used the house gym for showers and a fresh change of clothes.

Paul Ryan then married and took his bride back to Janesville. He lives on the same street he lived on as a kid and shares the neighborhood with eight other members of the Ryan clan. He hunts with the local Janesville hunt club and attends PTA meetings and other civic functions.

For those who can't make those public functions, Paul Ryanbought an old bread truck, converted it into a "mobile constituent office" and drives around to meet with those who need his help and attention.

No, I don't know if we can vote for a guy like this. He doesn't have a regal pedigree; he's Irish for God's sake! No one awarded him a Nobel Peace Prize two months after getting elected. No one threw flowers or got "chills down their leg" as a he took his seat in Congress.

What is most despicable about Paul Ryan is that he has had the nerve to write the House Budget for three years in a row. He's is brazen and heartless in advocating in that budget for a $5 trillion dollar reduction in federal spending over the next ten years! The House passed his budget three years in a row and three years in a row the Democratically controlled Senate has let it die in the upper house, without ever proposing a budget of their own. What is wrong with this guy? If Congress were to cut $5 trillion dollars from thebudget where would the President get the money to give $500 million dollars to a bankrupt Solyndra? Or $200 million dollars for bankrupt Energy 1? Or $11 billion dollars to illegal aliens filing INIT, non-resident tax returns to claim $11 billion big ones in child tax credits, even for their children living in Mexico?

I don't know. Paul Ryan seems heartless to me. He keeps wanting to cut government waste, he keeps wanting to put a halt to those big GSA conventions in Vegas and, worse, he keeps trying to make people look at that $16.7 trillion dollar deficit! The guy's no fun at all!

Who wants a numbers cruncher? Who wants someone spoiling the party by showing folks the bill? Nothing will spoil a party quicker than sending the host the bill before the party's over.

On a Monday night in late September, Paul Ryan sat on the edge of a couch in his suite at the Cincinnatian Hotel, his left fist clenched so tightly around the neck of his bottle of Miller Lite that I could see the veins bulging in his hands. It was the end of a long day that began at Ryan’s home in Janesville, Wis., where he’d spent the weekend preparing for the vice-presidential debate. Early Monday morning, he flew to the first of two fund-raisers, on top of which he did three local TV interviews and a brief chat on Fox Business Network and also a town-hall meeting, plus a half-hour phone call with Mitt Romney, after which he finally settled in on the couch to watch his Green Bay Packers play the Seattle Seahawks on “Monday Night Football.” A few minutes after kickoff, Ryan’s traveling press secretary, Michael Steel, led me into the suite where Ryan was watching the game with his older brother Tobin, his campaign adviser Dan Senor, the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.

“Is this the guy who’s writing that hit piece on me?” Ryan said, rising to shake my hand. He’s adept at wielding sarcasm in a way that can both disarm and manipulate — signaling a likable, faux-fatalistic awareness of How the Game Is Played. At 42, Ryan looks even younger and more angular in person than he does on television. He says he was teased as a child for looking like Eddie Munster, because of his black widow’s peak, and in the course of reporting this article, I also heard people liken him to Greg Brady; Will Schuester, the music-club director in “Glee”; Kyle MacLachlan, who played Special Agent Dale Cooper on “Twin Peaks”; a bat; an owl; an eagle; and Boner, from “Growing Pains.”

“Get yourself some ribs,” Ryan said after shaking my hand. Everyone had plates balanced on their laps filled with ribs and chicken and coleslaw from a Cincinnati barbecue joint that Ryan frequented in his college days at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The game on TV was the infamous contest — the crime, Ryan called it — that effectively forced a settlement of the referees’ lockout, after Seattle won on a last-second touchdown pass that the replacement officials should have ruled an interception or offensive pass interference. At a rally the next morning, Ryan would parallel the incompetence of the replacement refs to President Obama’s handling of the economy. But the calamity unfolding now involved the Packers offensive line being devoured by the Seattle pass rush, which was on its way to sacking quarterback Aaron Rodgers eight times in the first half. “And we drafted all these linemen too,” Ryan said.

Ryan tries to plan his schedule around Packers games and also owns shares in the team, the only nonprofit, community-held professional sports franchise in the United States. “I am an owner,” he said proudly. When I made a crack about how that would make him another of Mitt Romney’s rich N.F.L.-owner pals — a reference to Romney’s ill-fated attempt in March to score Everyman points by asserting his friendship with a couple of the league’s chieftains — Ryan did not seem to know what I was talking about, or pretended not to.

Across from the couch where Ryan was sitting, Portman kept urging me to “get some sauce” for my ribs, motioning to a glass bowl next to the television. Portman, a former congressman and White House budget director, was a top runner-up to Ryan in the vice-presidential sweepstakes. One mark against the wealthy senator was that he might be perceived as too much of a Grey Poupon Republican in the stiff mold of Romney, an image Ryan helps to counter with his deer-hunting, football-loving, Rage Against the Machine-listening ways. As Seattle’s quarterback unleashed a long pass from midfield — and as Portman looked up suggestively at me and said, again, “It’s all about the sauce” — the Ryan brothers let out a simultaneous moan as the Seahawks went up 7-0. Ryan swigged from his beer and sniffled and made the first of several mentions of the bad head cold he was fighting. “I should not be drinking,” he said. “But, c’mon, it’s ribs, it’s football, so I gotta have a beer.” He then coughed a couple of times and announced that he would be watching the second half in bed.

"As part of his role, [Paul] Ryan had wanted to talk about poverty, traveling to inner cities and giving speeches that laid out the Republican vision for individual empowerment. But Romney advisers refused his request to do so, until mid-October, when he gave a speech on civil society in Cleveland. As one adviser put it, 'The issues that we really test well on and win on are not the war on poverty."

That is the authentic sound of the Republican political operative class at work: in charge, supremely confident, essentially clueless.--------------

This impresses me with Paul Ryan. Give him credit for better political instincts than the campaign, and another sign of having the guts to tackle the hard jobs. Going into the neighborhoods and reaching out with a message and facing the criticisms head-on needed and still needs to happen.

A tour like that might have led to a swarm of protest against the ticket. Better for the nation to have experienced that a couple of months ago instead of being blindsided in November.

Black America voted some 96%(?)for Obama's second term without a specific promise but in hope of something better to come. Paul Ryan could have laid out that hope with specifics, but his handlers knew better.

If Ryan had succeeded in being heard but failed to change minds with his appearances, he would have at least planted a seed for the next 4 years. Instead, Republicans remain only the caricature that their opponents draw of them.

Paul Ryan to Propose Sweeping Consolidation in Antipoverty PitchPlan Will Include New Work Requirements, More Accountability and Efficiency, Congressman SaysBy Damian PalettaUpdated July 24, 2014 9:09 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON—House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is proposing to consolidate up to 11 federal antipoverty programs into a single funding stream for states, a plan he says will include new work requirements and create more accountability and efficiency in assisting low-income Americans.

Food stamps, housing assistance, child-care aid and cash welfare would be among the funding streams pooled into the program, potentially redirecting more than $100 billion in federal support each year.

While many Republicans and President Barack Obama have offered anti-poverty proposals recently, Mr. Ryan's status as budget committee chairman and a leading architect of GOP fiscal plans mean that his ideas are likely to become central to the Republican policy discussion. His plan to consolidate antipoverty efforts is the main element of a sweeping set of proposals that he is unveiling Thursday to address incarceration, education aid, the Earned-Income Tax Credit and many other federal programs.

Mr. Ryan believes the current set of federal antipoverty programs creates a disincentive for people to work, as families fear they will lose benefits if their income rises above certain thresholds. Many of his ideas would transfer federal decision-making to state leaders, who he believes are best equipped to tailor programs to help residents.

The plan, outlined in a 73-page proposal called "Expanding Opportunity in America," would challenge decades of federal antipoverty strategy. Many anti-poverty programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, exist as hybrid designs that require cooperation and administrative involvement from states and the federal government.

Mr. Ryan would, in a number of these programs, require the federal government to offer more responsibility to state leaders and change the federal role to focus more on oversight.

"The idea would be to let states try different ways of providing aid and then to test the results—in short, more flexibility in exchange for more accountability," Mr. Ryan wrote in an opinion piece that ran Thursday in USA Today.

In anticipation of Mr. Ryan's proposals, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), the top Democrat on the Budget committee, said, "Democrats welcome any ideas that lift more Americans out of poverty and create pathways into the middle class. But we will oppose any plan that uses the sunny language of 'reform' as a guise to cut vital safety-net programs."

Liberal groups are likely to describe Mr. Ryan's proposal as a way of transforming federal assistance into "block grants'' to states, something they have long resisted. Many say states are less capable than the federal government of ensuring the delivery of benefits to low-income families. They have said these services should not depend on the political decisions of governors, some of whom rejected an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Ryan would consolidate 11 anti-poverty programs into one funding stream, which he calls an "Opportunity Grant,'' for states that volunteered to participate. States would have to submit a plan to the federal government describing how the money would be allocated.Related Video

In a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) will outline his plan for a conservative response to help Americans in poverty. WSJ's Jerry Seib describes four themes Ryan will discuss in an attempt to reignite the idea of compassionate conservatism. Photo: AP

Several conditions would determine whether states qualify for the program, Mr. Ryan wrote. Funds would have to go to people "in need." States would have to incorporate work requirements and limit the duration that recipients could participate. States would have to allow multiple providers to offer services under the program.

"All this time, a neutral third party would keep tabs on each provider and its success rate, looking at key metrics: How many people are finding jobs? How many people are getting off assistance? How many people are moving out of poverty?" Mr. Ryan said. "Any provider who came up short could no longer participate. And at the end of the program, we would pool the results and go from there."

States participating in the new program would have to ensure that low-income disabled and elderly Americans do not lose access to benefits. If their state participates in the Opportunity Grant program, they would either retain their existing benefits or receive similar benefits in a new program, Mr. Ryan said.

Mr. Ryan will lay out details in a speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank. Democrats plan a conference call immediately afterward to counter his proposals, reflecting how they believe his ideas could quickly influence much of the GOP's economic strategy across the country.

Democrats have long accused Republicans, and particularly Mr. Ryan, of looking to balance the federal budget primarily by cutting spending on programs for low-income Americans. Mr. Ryan said his plan would be deficit-neutral—neither adding to or reducing the deficit—suggesting it would not cut government spending but change how current money is allocated.

Mr. Ryan's proposal is the latest in a series of plans offered by Republicans as part of an effort to rethink how conservatives approach antipoverty programs.

President Barack Obama has made economic inequality a major theme of his second term, calling for a higher minimum wage and expanded work-related tax credits. Many in the GOP are eager to fashion proposals that reflect their own approach to inequality and poverty.

Mr. Ryan previously has proposed deep cuts in federal spending on programs such as Medicaid and food stamps, and he has said that federal assistance creates a culture of "dependency" among the poor that makes it harder for people to climb the economic ladder. Mr. Ryan does not offer new proposals for Medicaid in his plan.

Mr. Ryan's proposal is similar to a plan recently outlined by Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), who has called for consolidating all antipoverty programs into a single funding stream for states and allowing states to allocate the money based on federal guidelines. A major difference is that Mr. Ryan's proposal, as described, would be voluntary for states.

Both lawmakers are considered potential presidential candidates in 2016. The new antipoverty platform likely would make up a key plank in either man's economic plan, should he run for the White House.

Mr. Ryan, who was the Republican Party's vice-presidential candidate in 2012, has spent months visiting low-income neighborhoods and meeting with community activists trying to find ways to offer conservative-principled proposals that would apply to issues poor families want to address.

The "Opportunity Grant" is part of a broad set of proposals that Mr. Ryan is unveiling Thursday. Other parts of the plan include:

Expanding the earned-income tax credit for childless workers. The White House has offered a similar proposal. Mr. Ryan differs on this point from Mr. Rubio, who has called for scrapping the EITC and replacing it with an income supplement.

Streamlining federal grant, loan and work-study programs. Mr. Ryan says federal involvement in student loans has "stoked" tuition inflation. He would also expand accreditation in an attempt to spur more access to technical careers, an idea that has drawn active interest from both parties in Congress.

Revising mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for nonviolent offenders, to prevent prisons from becoming overcrowded and making it easier for people to reenter society. He would also expand rehabilitative programs in prisons.

Mr. Ryan is likely to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in January, which would give him control over a panel that oversees taxes and entitlement programs, such as Social Security.

Nice post and good work by Paul Ryan. He has been quietly visiting and studying poverty in America, seeing what most people outside certain areas never see. If we had everyone who can, fully participating in our economy, this would be a prosperous nation beyond our wildest imagination. Instead we are saddled with programs intended to help that are holding millions and millions of people back unmercifully.

Paul Ryan may not be the person with the charisma to win over the nation from the Presidential podium, but he is most certainly the right person to lead the House Ways and Means committee and the next President with a positive agenda going forward.